Page 52 of Rat Park
For once, Flor seemed happy with the silence. Dominic felt him relax fully, his breath slow and even. He watched Flor’s sleeping face in nothing but the glow of a lamp and felt himself sink.
He couldn’t look at his own thoughts. They were creatures that crept in the dark, deformed bodies Dominic had battled a million times before and had always lost to.
For minutes, Dominic didn’t move. He just watched Flor sleep. The beautiful shadow of his face, the parted lips, the sound of his gentle snore. His body was soft and warm and if Dominic were someone else, if he was worthy, if he had not just had sex with the last person on earth he should have taken to bed, then maybe he would have allowed himself to drift off next to Flor and be at peace.
But that was not what Dominic deserved.
Slowly, carefully, Dominic untangled himself from Flor’s sleep-slack hold. He paused for a moment at the edge of the bed as Flor stirred, breathing a sigh when he didn’t wake.
Dominic got up, collecting his clothes, his wallet, his keys, before dressing in the living room. The silence of the dark room seemed to reverberate inside Dominic’s skull.
He took a step towards the front door. Paused. Unable to resist, he turned back to his bedroom and stopped at the doorway to watch Flor for another moment. Flor, in his bed, underneath his sheets, smelling like him and them and sex, sated and soft and with his arms still outstretched as if waiting for Dominic to return.
Dominic closed his eyes, but the image had seared itself inside him.
With barely a sound, he left.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dominic walked around for the whole night, not even pausing to sit down. He walked, putting one foot in front of the other, as if he could escape what was waiting for him in his room, until the sun was high in the sky. The winter air was frigid, adding to the numbness across his skin. His eyes burned with exhaustion, but he kept on walking until he could barely feel his body and the remnants of Flor’s touch anymore.
It was already past the afternoon by the time he arrived back at his apartment. He opened the front door quietly and listened, but there was nothing but silence. He stepped inside. He breathed in and could still smell Flor in the air.
He closed his eyes against the scent, but it only seemed to fill his head.
Relief shook him as he saw the rest of the small apartment was empty too. The bed was unmade, Flor’s clothes gone. The empty condom wrapper glinted on the floor.
Dominic went to the kitchen to soothe his sore throat with water but paused when he saw the note laying silently on one of the counters. His gut clenched as he approached it, picking it up to see what it read.
NOT. COOL.
Flor had written on a scrap of paper. The words were underlined so many times the lines reached the bottom edge of the paper. Dominic almost smiled, but it hurt too much.
Forgetting the water, Dominic went in search of his phone, finding it on the coffee table. He clicked on the notification for a text.Where are you?Flor had sent. Just one, as if he had heard the phone ping from the living room and known not to try again.
The text was timestamped for the middle of the night. Dominic’s chest felt tight at the thought of Flor waking up alone, of him searching the dark apartment to find it empty, of him sending the text, confused, only to realise Dominic had run away from his own apartment to get away from him.
Dominic was familiar with shame. It was different from guilt, ran deeper and thicker, melted against his bones until it was part of him, but he’d rarely felt anything like this. He’d never had something so good to ruin. He didn’t know if it was a privilege or a curse.
It wasn’t that Flor was not even nineteen whilst he was twenty-seven. It was about the trust Dominic had broken. Cat and Esteban had let him into their house when Flor was just sixteen. They had trusted him when he was at his least trustworthy. They had asked him without words to take care of Flor when they spent time together, when Flor was in his car or Dominic in their kitchen, alone with their son.
They had saved him—Flor had saved him—because he was a danger to himself, and this was how he repaid them. By taking what he wanted when Dominic was not fit to be partner to anyone, much less Flor, who had his whole life in front of him. Whom Dominic had already hurt by leaving in the night like a thief that had stolen Flor’s regard.
Dominic ripped the clothes from himself and got into the shower, not turning the temperature down even though it was scalding. He washed Flor from his skin, even if the memory of it clung, untouchable by physical forces.
Dominic dressed and curled up on the couch, away from the scent of Flor that was sure to still linger in his bed, and prayed the exhaustion inside him would be merciful and take him away.
**********
Somehow, Dominic managed to avoid the Romeros for most of December. He hadn’t accepted their invitation to any previous holiday celebration, so his refusal that year didn’t ring out of place. He claimed an increased work schedule to Cat and Esteban as to avoid Monday dinners and Thursday volunteering rounds, picking up more shifts to soften the lie.
Flor’s texts he left completely unreplied. Flor didn’t send many, obviously angry at Dominic, but each one lighting up his phone had him feeling sick to his stomach and paralyzed for the rest of the day.
He tried not thinking about it. Tried not to think of Flor’s hands and the sound of his strained voice as he asked for more. Tried not to think of Cat and Esteban and the trust Dominic had broken. He tried to keep occupied, exercising deep into the night and falling exhausted into the clean sheets on the bed, but it didn’t help. Flor was everywhere. There was no escaping it.
Dominic had hoped Flor’s Christmas break would pass without them seeing each other, but he should have known a little radio silence would not deter Flor.
Two days after Christmas, as Dominic was washing the lonely plate he had used for dinner, a knock cut through the permeated stillness of his apartment. Dominic stilled, instinctively knowing who it was.
